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Injuries and their Tissue Mechanics 1/12

A Journey on injuries Tissue Mechanics Join me on a journey exploring injuries, here is your ‘open-ended ticket’ and I invite all disciplines involved in Health and Fitness to join in with intelligent discussions here – troll’s (cyber bullies) will not be tolerated and will be removed from drjoabbott.com. Over the next 12 weeks We shall be exploring the Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) world of injuries: What are injuries? How do injuries happen? What are the most common injuries? What happens when an injury occurs?  What can we do to help?  What advice should we be giving to a Patient/Client who has injured themselves? What rehabilitative tools should we be using/advising? Why do some people never improve post injury? Why do some injuries initiate a domino effect when going through rehab? When do we know we have optimised the rehab programme?  And many more questions that I hear on a …

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Injuries and their Tissue Mechanics 2/12 (Warning: Prosected Images)

Personal Trainer to Clinical Anatomist When I worked at a Personal Trainer, with a successful client base, I quickly learnt that my anatomy education had been bias towards understanding the principles of anatomy through classic anatomy ‘book’ and it’s application to exercise rehabilitation.  I personally believed there was a ‘missing link’ in my anatomy knowledge.  In 2010 I begun my Clinical Anatomy Qualification at Keele University, Staffordshire.  I spent three years dissecting and exploring our human form and documented the anatomy in the books we read was only present in 56% of the population – the rest have a variety of forms. For my final exam I chose to dissect the path of the sciatic nerve (SN); observe its anatomical relationship with the piriformis muscle (PM) and to measure; the diameter of the SN as it exits the greater sciatic foramen, the motor branches (MB’s), motor entry points (MEP’s) innervating the …

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The Sciatic Nerve, it’s Anatomy, that will make you understand it’s Pain 3/12

What goes wrong? Compromising the sciatic nerve and its components by particular treatments, surgical interventions or injuries, limit day-to-day activities by affecting the lower extremity’s function.  Musculoskeletal complications such as gait pattern deviations may occur i.e. drop foot, weak dorsi flexion and eversion, toe extensor difficulty, twisting ankle, tripping, sensory impairment to touch over the distal aspect of the leg and dorsum of the foot (Katirji & Wilbourn 1994, Vardi 2004, Viera et al. 2007, An et al. 2010) are signs of a compromised sciatic nerve, sciatica. Typical manifestations of trauma to the sciatic nerve include; idiopathic palsy; postural habits; rapid weight loss; intrinsic or extrinsic nerve tumours; potential sciatic cross-over paths of propagation of intraneural cysts or extra neural compression by synovial cyst; soft tissue trauma; osseous mass or large fabella (LeGeyt & Ambrose 1998, Loredo et al. 1998, Spinner et al. 2003, Dellon 2005, Pokorny 2006, Spinner et …

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Behind the Scenes of a Patient with Sciatica 4/12

Bigger Picture Stuff Full Patient/Client History is nothing to be taken likely when exploring sciatica – it is a quarter (see image below) of your initial exploratory investigations in to why the person is sitting in front of you seeking your help and support. Besides, have you ever met a Patient/Client (P/C) who doesn’t want to tell you about their woe’s? About the things that are bothering them? What causes their pain? What they are no longer able to do? What their goals are? And why they sought out your help?  Taking good P/C history is the beginning of your journey together.  This drives the ability to; set specific goals for you both: maximising outcomes in minimum time; and ensure you explore/define/question parts of their history allowing you to triangulate (a powerful technique that facilitates validation of data through cross verification from two or more sources) your theory (hypothesis).  This …

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